Negative side of the gov’s propa

The political campaigning in the province of Cebu seems to be getting unpredictably interesting. I say “unpredictably” because I heard the camp of Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, as soon as the filing of the certificates of candidacy was closed, with a resounding claim that this coming May election is going to be a no contest of sort. To them, her political opponent, a certain Pamela Baricuatro, is an absolute nobody and will simply bite the dust.

I also use the word “interesting” because there appears a well-crafted strategy applied by this neophyte challenger that has begun to dent the vaunted juggernaut of the incumbent. The recent deluge in the social media continues to indicate remarkable surge of Pam’s candidacy. Known commentators and opinion makers in the main stream media have so noticeably seen the growing popularity of the gubernatorial challenger that they joined the bee line of journalists seeking to interview her. Yesterday, however, this paper reported an incredible survey indicating that Pam obtained a rating which is even lower than the numbers she got on the day she filed her certificate of candidacy!

In any case, what strategy have I discerned is being adopted by the Baricuatro camp? It uses the known highlights of Governor Garcia’s administration and shows these data as indicative of serious flaws in governance. My experience in political planning is either very little or none but I agree a shade of Sun Tzu’s Art of War in making useless a massive military arsenal of an opponent. How? The governor trumpets the economic strength of the province. No one questions the status of Cebu Province as the richest in the country. Yet from the incumbent’s glowing economic accolade, the challenger is showing ponderous data how poorly the provincial government is run.

A Facebook post of Pam Baricuatro acknowledges that Cebu is financially very healthy. That acknowledgment should add glow to the face of the governor. Well, the fact is that the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has declared Cebu as the richest province in the country having posted over P300 billion in net equity. In finance, the term equity refers to the value when liabilities are subtracted from assets. With a rather ironical twist, Pam insists that this provincial affluence should not be reason to waste P200 million in such flashy activity as “suroy suroy.” Pam, instead, elicits smiles from her supporters with her own narrative that this huge amount of wasted public funds be better used to provide hospitals with needed staff and medicines specially when she revealed verifiable facts and indisputable figures of the sad state of the province’s health care.

The biggest score Baricuatro got came from the commentary of broadcaster Jeson Monteclar still using the wealth of the province as starting point of discussion. By the way, this post was forwarded to me by a man named Romy. Because we are not friends with this Romy, I imagined that blasting this video to unknown cellphone numbers, like mine, is part of Pam’s effective strategy. Accordingly, Cebu has remained the richest province in the Philippines for the 10th consecutive year. It is a Garcia extra ordinary achievement. But Monteclar highlighted the negative side of the PSA news story enough to stain governor’s efforts. The PSA, quoting from the Annual Financial Report of the Commission on Audit, however revealed that Cebu had the most number of poor people at 1.72 million!

The video tried to project broadcaster Monteclar as without sounding bias. His body language more than his heavy rhetoric though was damning. Things did not add up, he added. How could the richest province make it to the top list of the most number of impoverished citizenry? Romy, the post sharer exposed his political leaning when he added his own comment “Pam na mi!”